I Miss You
by Pantz
Summary: She was supposed to be his forever.


**Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling**

**I Miss You**

He has always been so old.

Even when he was a child, he was forever that voice of reason and discipline that sucked all the sunshine out of a room.

He never had the time to be a kid and he thinks, sometimes, that maybe that was why he had loved her so much.

Because a part of him believed she would _never_ grow old. She was supposed to be his constant, his eternal hold onto a world that he never understood.

She was supposed to be his forever.

He fell in love with her one day when he was cleaning pumpkin juice off the side of her chin. She was gossiping, saying that you know who liked you know who and that you know who was so horribly sad and distraught because she liked him, too. She was laughing. He remembers it was loud and prominent and so unladylike, so improper and wild that he knew he must love it. She took a drink. It dribbled down her lips and onto her chin and she didn't even notice it. He wiped it off, she looked into his eyes, and it was as simple as that.

Penny, for as quiet and reserved as she seemed to be was a wild one when a person got to know her. Like, he knew that underneath her skirt and undergarments she had a tattoo plastered right on her bottom. And he knew that a few times over the years she had snuck out with his younger brothers while they were wreaking havoc on the school. He knew that her eyes twitched when she was angry and bit her nails when she was nervous and whispered "Buck up," to herself right before she cried.

He knew she danced in the astronomy tower when it rained and knew she would have been on her house's quidditch team for the last two years of school if she didn't knock a bludger hard at the captain causing him to be in the hospital wing for three days.

He knew how to read her eyes. They were sapphires when she was happy and twinkled and smiled and made him feel warm. They darkened to gray when she was sad and lost their personality instead becoming dead pools of pain. When she was sad, her stare was empty and pitiful and used to create a pit in the bottom of his stomach because how, how could anything make such an amazing and sweet girl feel that kind of pain?

When she cried, it wasn't pretty. Her nose turned bright red and her mascara never failed to run down her cheeks and she wailed as if the world was ending. Her body would shake and her head fall and he would hold her until the storm was over.

All of this is what he had loved about her.

Then he left school, left his home, but stayed with her.

Her flat was small with one bedroom and one bathroom but they made do with what little they could afford.

She was trying to become a healer. It was a poor phase in her life.

On Saturday mornings she would make them pancakes and shout at him until he allowed them to eat on the balcony.

She asked every weekend. And every weekend he fought her and told her they should eat at a table like grown ups, like civilized people. And every weekend she would stick her nose in the air and tell him she had no time for the civilized.

And at that time, he didn't have time for them either.

On weekday mornings, she always left first because healing school started oh so early. Yet when he woke, he smelled her on the bed and walked to the kitchen and there waiting for him was breakfast and coffee and the morning's Daily Prophet.

As a thanks, he sent her flowers during her shifts and left notes for her in her locker. They said little things.

_I miss you._

_You're beautiful._

_Did you know Crouch wears heart boxers under his robe? Shh, don't tell._

Little things that she took home and put in a drawer so years from now she would be able to look back on them and remember the bloom of their love and possibly, _possibly_, look over her shoulder and laugh with him about what he wrote years and years before.

Some nights they spent hours just in each other's arms, not saying a word. They just sat with their arms around each other, needing nothing else. Other nights, their friends would come over and she would decorate the house a theme and tell people that today, they must wear all blue. People would come, butter beer (maybe firewhiskey) would be passed around, and the small get together would fill with life. He would go to bed smiling as he held her knowing that he had the world.

And then one day he woke up and realized that it wasn't enough.

Their apartment was too small. His job at the ministry was embarrassing. And she, she didn't share his dreams of prosperity.

When he grew older, he never wanted his family to want for anything as he did for all his childhood. They would have it all.

She always believed all they needed was each other.

Their laughing apartment slowly turned into a quiet echo of life.

He began to take on more and more hours at work leaving her alone but for when they slept at night.

It was as if he wasn't there at all.

He stopped inviting their friends over and on weekday nights she instead sat on the balcony waiting for him to come home until sleep over took her.

He would come home and carry her to bed as her eyes opened just an inch and she whispered that she tried to stay up for him.

"_I haven't seen you in so long,"_ she whispered as she fell into sleep again.

On weekends, he would slightly wonder why she never laughs and if she realizes that this, all of what he is doing, is for her, for _them_.

He would tell her, _"Penny, soon we'll have the world. Soon you'll have it all."_

She would shake her head and cry as he held her. Her face would puff up and nose turn red and his heart would break as he begged her to stop.

"_Don't you see,"_ he would whisper._ "Don't you see what I'm doing for you?"_

She would push out of his arms and yell_, "Don't you mean for you,"_ before running out of the apartment and to a friend's house. He would wait patiently for her to return and make a beautiful dinner and have roses waiting and she would forgive him.

She would always forgive him.

One night, she waited up for him all night long.

She was crying when he came home that night. Bawling on the balcony and he knelt down and asked her what was the matter.

She told him it was him.

She told him she didn't think she could love him anymore.

"_I don't know who you are anymore."_

"_Penny, I'm the same as I always have been."_

She shook her head and a tear hung on the edge of her nose. He took a finger and wiped it away.

"_No, no I don't think you are."_

She stood up, walked into the bedroom, and fell asleep. He came in hours later, knelt in front of her, and kissed her lips goodnight.

Her eyes didn't even flutter open.

The next day he moved into his twin brothers' apartment.

Over the next few years, he worked his way up in the ministry, made a small fortune, and even wrote a few best sellers for the financially repugnant. He had made quite a name for himself.

He never saw her again, but he heard about her.

"_Did you know she graduated?"_

"_Oh yes, she's a field doctor for the Aurors. Must be exciting."_

"_Oh, I got her wedding invitation just last week."_

"_She still seems as young as she was in school. You remember what she was like?"_

And his eyes would mist over and he would whisper that yes, yes he does remember. And yes, she was the most beautiful person he had ever known.

One day, he heard she was sick.

"_Cancer,"_ someone had said to him. _"It's a tragedy really. She was always so full of life."_

He was nearing forty that day. He had accomplished all of his goals and yet felt as if his life was nothing.

And without her for all those years, it was possible that it was.

He wrote her a single note that day and sent it off by owl to the hospital.

He didn't sign his name or put an address, but he knew that she would know it was from him. If she ever loved him at all, she would know it was from him and know that he had never stopped thinking about her.

A week later she was dead.

He went to the funeral and saw some old friends of theirs who were with her when she died. He sat in a pew in the back of the Church. Away from everyone until the service was over and he was no longer left to dwell in his pain.

Her best friend from school, Eloisa, sought him out.

"_She was holding this when she died,"_ Eloisa said as she stuffed a piece of parchment in his hand and walked away to hug who he thought was Penny's husband.

He looked at the paper,

_I miss you._ It was written in his own, messy scribble.

Emd!

If you didn't know the HE I refer to is Percy Weasley!


End file.
